


All was well

by flash in the pan (MadameLaMielleuse)



Category: David Bowie (Musician)
Genre: F/M, Family, Fluff, Love, Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-16
Updated: 2015-12-16
Packaged: 2018-05-07 02:45:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5440583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadameLaMielleuse/pseuds/flash%20in%20the%20pan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>David Bowie awakes from a nightmare and is left restless from it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All was well

**All was well**

David awoke with a start. When he came to his senses, his pulse still raging, skin cool with sweat, he sat upright in his bed. It had not been a particularly lucid dream, but more of a feeling that had crept up to him under the covers, put its clammy arms around him and then tried to suffocate him.

Breathing heavily, he swung his legs out of bed. Iman was sleeping beside him, exhausted from what had been a long day. The carpet beneath his feet was soft and familiar when he left the bedroom and walked through the apartment. He needed fresh air.

In the living room he opened the large doors to their private roof terrace and let the mild summer night air into the apartment. While his lungs filled with deep breaths, he laid down on the couch and tried to remember what the image from his dream had been.

Ordinarily, he no longer dreamed. The scientists were right – and in some way it was depressing – the older you got, the less you had access to this secret hideaway in your brain. And yet, it seemed to him that he _knew_ the dream in a way that he had not had it once, but over and over again – just years ago. The knot in his stomach felt familiar.

Restless, he turned on to his stomach and reached for the power button of the CD player on the shelf. He turned the volume down so far that even he had to listen closely to hear the classical composition when it wrapped itself softly around him, caressing and calming him.

He had dreamed of his first conscious memory. Now he was almost certain that it _was_ a memory and not a dream that he had had as a young child. It must have been around the time when he was three years old. His mother had tucked him in for a nap in his bassinet and then left him alone.

David could remember how their hallway had always been dark, and how extraordinarily black and devouring the staircase had been. He had lain there – paralyzed in his far too little body – and had been staring at the unknown blur, as if it had been lurking and breathing, back there in the corner, waiting for his mother to leave.

 

In the dark apartment, the silence was torn when a baby began to cry. David sat up and blinked. He was so engrossed in his memory of the awful moment in his bassinet, and how his mother had left him there alone that he needed several moments to understand where he was. He stood up with a small yawn, but it was too late -- at the end of the corridor, the bedroom door was opened.

So far, Lexi had been a quiet child, who only required to be held until she fell asleep or wanted to have company until she had found a new way to entertain herself. David was still a little groggy and sleepy when Iman went past him into the nursery. On the way back to bed, stopped in her tracks when she saw her husband sitting on the couch.

The little bundle in her arms, she came to him without a word. "Do you want her?" she asked and handed him their daughter before she sat down beside him and leaned against him. The little creature looked up at David, her eyes large and dark. The next moment, Lexi seemed to have realized that her mother was no longer the one holding her, because she began to get restless again.

"Don’t worry, she is just hungry," Iman noticed how David suddenly stiffened, fearing he had done something wrong, before she smiled. "My mother told me that I was the same way. And that I should expect to get up in the middle of the night to feed her."

David watched as she lifted the top of her pajamas and took over the baby again. She had been right: Lexi calmed down, a tiny hand satisfied on her mother's breast, as she started to drink.

David put his arm around Iman and ran his fingers gently through her long, curly hair, which she always wore open at night. "I had forgotten how _small_ they are," he muttered. The last time that he had had a child was almost thirty years ago.

In harmony, they sat in the moonlight of the warm summer night and watched their newborn daughter. In the warm embrace of her parents, the baby had blissfully closed her eyes.

"Why were you up in the first place?" Iman suddenly remembered, looking worried at her husband when she noticed the music which was still playing softly in the background. It was Strauss' _Four Last Songs_. The only time she knew him to put it on was when they were upstate in Woodstock, enjoying their private paradise and let their thoughts come to a rest.

David had laid his head on her shoulder. All of a sudden, the memory had lost much of its power. Sleepiness had already overcome him again. He placed a gentle kiss on her round shoulder and pulled her closer to him.

"It’s not important anymore."


End file.
